Half Perfect World

Thursday, April 20, 2017

When I was eight years old, I fell out of a tree and my face smashed into the rosewood beams that lay beneath it. I still wonder how I’m alive today, or at least not incredibly deformed.

It was a dry day, and I was taking a break between math problems. Way was talking to a visitor halfway down the hill, and, overcome with a sudden curiosity, I climbed a tree to see who it was. Perched at my usual branch about four feet off the ground, I couldn’t see far enough down the hillside.

I climbed higher and higher, grabbing into unfamiliar branches, checking to see if I could get a better view at each branch. I was at least 12 feet up when I got a glimpse of the visitor in the driveway. It was a thin man with dreadlocks who I didn’t recognize.I reached up and shifted all my weight to a branch above me and hung there, letting my feet unwrap from the trunk as I peered down the hillside. Suddenly, there was a crack and a spray of rotted wood dust hit my face. Before I could grab another branch, I felt myself falling. The bottom fell out of my stomach, and everything was blurred. My heart raced and the warm summer air felt cold. Everything was a frantic swirl: a life-flashing past, and then evaporating. I flailed my arms in blind search for a branch to grab onto on the way down. The skin on my right arm was torn by something sharp, and then I saw it: the pile of rosewood logs that I was to hit in seconds. My muscles wrapped tight around my bones as I braced for impact. There were no more branches to grasp at. It was over.

My face hit the logs first and the rest of my body came crashing after it. It felt like the time I accidentally inhaled water at the river—a sharp sting high up in my nose from liquid in my sinuses and then a burning in my throat. But it came and went in a flash. Soon I didn’t feel anything but a warmth in my fingers and toes, everything else was numb. I didn’t move right away. It felt like I was standing outside of my body looking at myself, a calming warmth radiating through me. There was no pain. I didn’t move, I felt like I was falling asleep. I was brought back by the sound of Jah’s voice breaking into a long bawl. I sat up to see what was the matter. He was staring at me and screaming and I felt confused. I stood up and felt a wash of warm liquid run down my face and the front of my flowered rag dress, I my head felt so light on my shoulders, I almost fell over. I looked down and thought the red liquid looked pretty as it soaked into the fabric leaving behind the thick clumps of tissue that didn’t soak through the cloth.

The warm feeling spread from my fingers and toes to all of my skin. A dull metallic taste filled my mouth. I felt like laying back down and continuing my nap but I thought I should at least walk to the bed in the house.

Jah’s cries had alerted Na and she was standing at the end of the path by the house looking down the driveway that was the entrance to our hilltop home. When she saw me her fists clenched. Her face got red and she looked angry and terrorized at the same time. A warm trickle still flowed from my face, the blood soaked fabric of my dress stuck to my stomach and it felt like a warm blanket. I saw red dots of blood start to drip on my feet. I walked right up to her, looked up, and I smiled.

“I’m fine,” I said. “It doesn’t even hurt.”

Na grabbed at a nearby water drum to catch her balance. Her face went from red to pale. I felt a sweeping calm, like I did after eating a large hot meal. Sleep seemed so close, now. The ground looked soft, like a bed.“Can I take a nap?” I asked.

Na let out a primal scream. The world got blurry. I felt her grab my arm. “I’m so angry with you. I’ll never forgive you.” She said lowered herself to my level and looked me in the eyes. “I will never forgive you for this.”

Moments later, I felt cold water hit my face and it disrupted my euphoric feeling. I felt a deep, distant throb inside my skull. I felt Na’s hands on the back of my neck and a cold cloth dabbing my face. I heard voices. At my core, I just wanted everyone to know I was all right. I tried a smile but my muscles slackened. I just needed a nap. Everything would be fine. Why didn’t everyone know?

When my face was wiped off, Na led me to the hammock in the kitchen. I sat in it and laid back. The warm stream down my face had been replaced with the cool dampness of a cloth. My nostrils were full of something thick and wet. I had to breath out of my mouth.

“We need a doctor,” I heard Na say. Then I heard Way and saw his face appear over me. He returned to his discussion with Na. “We can do it ourself!” He said. Then they lowered their voices but I heard snippets of the conversation all ending in “her nose.”

I reached up to feel my face and Na slapped my hand. “Don’t touch it! We have to tape it on. We’ll just tape it in place. That’s what we’ll do.” She was talking fast and frantic and pacing. Jah was staring at me with red, watery eyes and quivering.

An idea was floating around in my head. Something bad happened. Something very bad happened to my face. My nose. Where was it? I couldn’t feel a thing, or at least no pain; just a cool breeze on my skin.

“I’m fine.” I repeated, and I was surprised at the gurgled, nasal sound that was my voice.

“Don’t talk!” Na shouted at me. “Just be quiet!”

She ran into the wooden house. Way turned to me and bent over the hammock, examining my face closely. “Yeah, Min,” he said smiling,“You bus’ up your face, but don’t worry. We a fix it, okay? Just relax.”

Na returned with a roll of duct tape, some cotton balls we used to wrap around sticks and use as Q-tips, and a pair of scissors. She set them on the kitchen table and she and Way discussed antibiotic cream, namely that we didn’t have any.

Way went into the garden near the kitchen and came back with four fat aloe vera leaves. He slit one open with a knife and dug its inner clear jelly into a bowl. Na mashed the cotton in it until it was wet and sticky. She then took the cotton and wiped my face with long gentle strokes in one direction. It felt slimy and cold, faintly itchy. Globs of it dripped down into the creases of my lips and an intense bitterness invaded my mouth. Na tore off pieces of duct tape, one after another, and stuck them over the aloe soaked cotton onto my face. It didn’t hurt. It felt like my face was not mine at all, like my being had shrunk inside of my body making it a shell.

When she was done, she asked if I could open my mouth. I could, but only halfway. She said it was fine. “Just enough to get a spoon in.” I breathed through my mouth, shut my eyes. The world went quiet.

Almost instantly, Na shook me. “You can’t sleep right away, you’ve had a concussion.” She said. “Jah, find her a book, I don’t want her to go into a coma.”

I opened my eyes and three pairs of eyes blinked back at me. Na had pulled up stools around the hammock for her and Jah and she held Chaka in her lap.

“She’s alive!” Jah jumped off the stool, a wild look on his face. “Now can I ask her which books?”

I wasn’t sure if he was happier that I was alive or that it meant that Na would read us story.

“Get the one with the story about the man who pulls the thread.” I gurgled.

Jah jumped as if he had heard a ghost. He looked at me for a second and then ran to the wooden house to find the book of Russian fairy tales that was my favorite.

The first story I requested was the one about a man who was going through a hard time. He encountered a witch in the forest who gave him a magical ball of thread. He could pull on the thread and time would fast forward, a perfect tool to skip over life’s worst moments. The man ended up pulling through all the hard parts of his life and so he aged and died fast–something like a matter of days.

“If you had that thread would you pull it ’til your face was fixed?” Jah asked.

I tried to open my mouth to answer but the duct tape pinched me. I would, I thought to myself. I’d pull the thread.

As Na read, Jah was tasked with keeping me awake. It was a duty he cherished, poking and pinching me whenever my eyes lowered. We sat there listening to stories until the evening birds could be heard in the surrounding jungle and Na had to boil the beans to preserve them for the next day. Jah helped me out of the hammock to the wooden house. By nightfall my face had swollen so far that my eyes were reduced to slits that I could barely see out of. Na had held her hand in front of my face at different points during the day to make sure I could see, and I could until my face swelled shut which set her at ease knowing that I had’t gone blind. Now, I saw slivers of light in front of me but the swelling made it hard to see far enough to walk.

We all packed onto our sponge mattress as usual. Na and Chaka at the bottom and Jah and I laying diagonally so out feet didn’t touch her. I got Jah’s pillow and mine to prop my head up on to help me breathe. Na said I could fall asleep, since I seemed pretty alert and out of the the woods for a possible coma. No sooner than I laid down, I fell asleep.

When I woke up I was alarmed that my eyes had sealed shut with a crusty dried fluid and I couldn’t open them. It stayed like that for about a week. Na changed the duct tape and cotton balls on my face every morning and evening and put more aloe on. A few days in, after I got my sense of smell back, I started to hate the smell of aloe. I laid in the hammock during the day and Na would check on my when she had time between chores. Most of the time my only company was Jah circling the hammock and telling me how horrible my face looked. “You look like a lizard,” He said one day, then he hesitated. “Well, a lizard who got beat up a pulp.”

I threw the cup I was holding in the direction of his voice.

“You look like a garrobo,” He said at length. “But without the tail I guess.”

I sat up. “Go get me a wet rag.”‘

“Why?”

“Just get me one, okay!”

He went to the kitchen and returned with a wet dish cloth. It smelled like rancid cooking grease. Still, I used it to rub my eyes until the dried mucus let go of my eyelashes and lids and I forced my eyes open, even to slits. The first thing I saw was Jah running to tell Na what I was doing.

I put the rag down and laid back in the hammock like nothing happened.

Na came from in from the kitchen and I felt her grip my arm and examine my face. “Do you want to go blind?”

“I want to see how bad it is.” I said.

She asked if I was sure. I nodded. She went to the house and got the one mirror and handed it to me. I held it close to my face so I could see. My heart jumped when I saw my face. It felt like little splinters fell in my stomach and my tongue got dry. It didn’t look like me at all. I was overcome by a terrifying feeling that it was how I would look for the rest of my life. I didn’t say anything, just handed the mirror back and tried to fight back tears.

“Maybe you don’t look like a garrobo so much,” Jah said once he saw my condition, and in a strange show of consolation, he poked me in the shoulder with a stick.

The swelling went down gradually, and after a couple weeks I was moving around and doing chores again.

The first chore i did was collect firewood. Jah and I took our machetes into the ravine on the outskirts of the bush to collect firewood. I was chopping dried branches and Jah was stacking them. My sight was fine now, and I could see everything that moved in the bush. I stopped chopping and sat down next to the pile of branches.

“What is it?” Jah asked.

“I’m so happy I can still see.” I said. I was looking at the leaves flickering in the canopy above. There were birds up there feeding on the luciana seeds. I finished all my chores that day like they were not chores at all. I decided that my biggest fear was going blind.

For weeks I avoided the mirror. I was still a sight with duct tape stretched over the middle of my face and the whites of my eyes blood red. I wondered if they would ever go back to normal. Na said not to worry, that it was “just broken blood vessels”.

I don’t remember the day it went away. I was a slow healing and one day Na didn’t put the duct tape back on, she just slathered the scar under my nose with Vaseline. My nose started itching and it took everything in me not to scratch it. And one day, I don’t remember the exact moment, but one day it was gone. My face was back to normal except for a raised scar right under my nose where the flesh had healed back. The fall became a bizarre memory.

The first tree I climbed after the fall was the guava tree. Guava season was just coming in and I wanted to get one before the piam piams pecked into them or before they were crawling with fruit worms. Jah went up the the tree first and I, after. It was like normal. I wasn’t afraid, instead I felt security in my new practice of checking the end of each branch to make sure there were green leaves on it. Na and Way saw me go up the tree in quiet approval. Looking back, they must have known I had suffered the best lesson of all, better then any scolding could carry.

In college, to my peer’s astonishment, I would scale the crab apple tree on campus on my way to class, eat as many as the tart fruit I could take, and then descend like a cat back onto the sidewalk with twigs lodged in my curls.

Over the years I’ve learned the art of climbing: examine the tree, know the durability of the wood type, know your limits, be flexible, always check the end of the branch before leaning your weight into to, and never put all your weight on a branch without making sure there is another within reach that can hold your weight. These are the principles of climbing.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Our mother’s mood swings can be fun, when she is on the high
part of them. My mother and I dance around the house singing and laughing, she
looks beautiful with her long dark hair swinging freely and a rosy flush on her
cheeks.

“Come on TT, dance with us!" I say to my sister through fits of
giggles.

Sarah Jane wants no part of it; she is content in the corner drawing.
"I'm busy," she says sternly without turning in our direction. I
can't for the life of me figure out why Sarah Jane or TT, as I call her, would
want to miss this fun time, but she knows something I am too young to
comprehend, that these highs our mother has, are undoubtedly always followed by
crushing lows. We are still having fun, we play with dolls, my mother doing
different voices for each, we try on some makeup that she brought over from the
States, she even picks me up over her head, and lets me pretend I am an
airplane. I am in heaven playing with her. We only stop because we are both
exhausted, and she must go outside to start dinner.

Our kitchen is just outside
and to the right of our house. A gigantic tree, which must have fallen some
time ago makes up our table, this is also where our father likes to sit and
smoke in the evenings. A roof consisting of old pieces of siding and fencing is
secured to some small surrounding trees and shelters the area from rain. Our
stove is made up of an old oil barrel with the top and part of one side cut
off. Broken cinder blocks are used to fill it up, and weigh it down from strong
winds. Fire wood is placed on top of the cinder blocks, and a make-shift grill
made of chicken wire is placed on top of the wood, for the pots and pans to sit
upon. When the fire gets low, it needs someone to blow on it, so the fire can
grow from the blast of oxygen. While this gets the fire going stronger and
hotter, the blower usually ends up with a face full of ashes and soot, that
come bursting from the stove as the air is blown in.

Despite the primitive set
up, and our father constantly telling her she cooks like a foolish white woman,
our mother enjoys cooking. After playing with me for hours, she slips out
to begin cooking the rice and beans for dinner. The cooking process takes a
while, getting the fire started and such, so I occupy myself by drawing
wonderful swirls with a crayon on paper. Sarah Jane has stopped drawing, she is
sitting up stiffly looking intently at the back door, passing a little rubber
ball between her hands. She is waiting for what is coming; the devastating low
of our mothers mood swing. Then we hear it, a scream of pain from outside. We
run out to see what happened, and find our mother holding her arm, she burnt
herself as a piping hot coal fell from the stove.

"Are you Okay
Mommy?" I ask, still blissfully ignorant of what is coming.

"No, I'm not
okay! I can't do all this!" she shouts, sounding angry and panicky. She
turns sharply to Sarah Jane and me; there is anger and hate in her usual gentle
eyes.

“This is your fault! Look what you did to me!" now she is screaming.
"I have to cook for you and clean for your, I can't do it all!" She
turns away and begins to sob. Our father is not here, he is in town, I wish he
was here, he would know what to do.

"Leave me alone! Get in the
house!" she cries out between sobs. "I'm going to the river."
She turns without looking at us toward the pineapple and banana tree-lined
path. Sarah Jane grabs my arm firmly yet gently and guides me inside.

“Mommy is
mad at us," I say through hiccups and sobs. I can see the hurt on Sarah
Jane's face too, but she is holding it in.

"She's not mad," she tell
me, "She just burnt herself. Let's clean the house and that will make her
happy again."

We get to work quickly cleaning the house. We put all our
clothes away in the duffle bags we use for travel and storage, we put our small
collection of toys in the corner, and as I work on putting the crayons away,
Sarah Jane goes outside to check on the now boiling pot of beans our mother
abandoned on the stove. Minutes turn to hours as we wait for her to come back
from the river. The beans finish cooking while Sarah Jane starts a smaller pot
with rice. Before the rice is done, our mother returns, her eyes and lips puffy
from crying. She comes up the three steps and through the door slowly, eyes
cast down. We are standing in the middle of the house, I am clinging tightly to
Sarah Jane's arm, and we pray she is not mad anymore.

"The house looks
wonderful," she says quietly. "You girls did a good job
cleaning."

Sarah Jane walks over to her, "Grandma told me this goes
on burns."

She hands our mother a tub of petroleum jelly. Our mother drops
to her knees and throw open her arms.

"My girls, what would I do without
you?" she says.

We both dive into her arms as she squeezes us tight. I
nestle my head into her neck and take in her scent, the wonderful smell of
patchouli oil. While in her arms I am sure everything is going to be alright. Though
her mood is better, the cloud around her does not lift until our father
returns, with a cookie for Sarah Jane and me to split and a small bottle of
whiskey. This pattern became more and more frequent, until there is no money
left and little food. Every night, our bellies ache so much with hunger,
occasionally I crawl into Sarah Jane's lap whimpering, and she holds me,
rocking me back and forth and singing a song she made up just for me.

We all
try to be resourceful; our father goes hunting and fishing, sometimes returning
with a small booty. Our mother stretches everything as far as she can and
always eats last. Sarah Jane and I try to help by stalking the pineapple
plants, checking them every day for signs of a ripening pineapple, ready to
taste the tingly sweet juice on our tongues.

The countdown until we will leave has already started, our
parents did not want to admit it, but they will not be living off the land, not
this time. Now it is only a matter of time, the fights stop, they are replaced
with quite whispered conversations which take place after they think we are
asleep. Before long, we pack our duffel bags, put on our clothes that cover as
much of our bodies from the dangerous jungle hike as possible, and begin our
journey to the States. "It's just for a little while," our mother
says trying to reassure herself. "We'll be back with your father in no
time; he just needs some time to work out a plan." Reasons are irrelevant
to me, all I can think is soon I will have Twinkies and cottage cheese again, we
won't be hungry anymore, and best of all, I will be in Michigan for my fourth
birthday.

This is where I feel safe and content, here on Farragut
Court in Northville, Michigan. The weather is cold, there is snow covering
everything, and that only makes it more wonderful. Sarah Jane and I love to
play in the snow. We strap on our snowsuits, mittens, hats and scarves that
have been patiently waiting for us to pull them out of the storage closet and
use them. We stay out in the snow playing, building snow forts, making snow
angels, and trying to get a grown up to take us to the hill a few blocks away
for sledding . We stay out until the bitter arctic air has made our noses and
lips numb, then still giggling and coated with clumps of snow, dash inside to
run our hands under the warm water, and then return to the frozen back yard. We must follow our grandparent’s strict rules
when we stay with them, and we miss our father and the freedom we had in
Belize, but the comforts and playmates that we find in Michigan make it easier
to live with these rules. I think of my birthday, just a little ways away, I
will get a scrumptious homemade cake, any kind I want. I think about spring,
when we can put on shorts and roll down the plush grassy hill.

For now we can
gorge ourselves on Twinkies, cheese puffs and fried bologna sandwiches. It will
not last; we know that it is only a matter of time. She will begin to miss him,
the crying will start, the longing for her husband would become unbearable, and
the panic attacks would start. Sadness and panic will overwhelm our mother, and
then, we will return to our father, and the dark, mysterious jungle to which he
seems anchored. For now, we will play in the snow, for now, we are secure,
protected and blissful.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

One of my earliest clear memories is riding on my father's
back, as we tracked through the Belizean jungle, the musty smell of his long
dreadlocks filling my nose, and their rough texture tickling my cheek. I can
see a blur of silver as the blade of his machete flies diagonally across his
body while he whips it through the thick dense brush with every step. Behind me
are my mother, her alabaster skin flushed pink with heat and exhaustion, and my
older sister Sarah Jane, her face in a determined scowl as she makes her way
through the newly cut yet still treacherous terrain.

I have the best seat in
the house, perched on my father’s back, but the long day of travel from Detroit
to Belize City, then to the jungle has taken a toll on my small body. I am
tired, hungry and a little hesitant of what lies ahead. After the arduous mile
hike, we reach our destination, a small 15' by 15' house on stilts, sitting
among the colossal trees of the rain forest. The house, which my father built
by hand, is simply made of planks of wood nailed together with windows on two
of the walls and doors on the other two. The planks did not fit perfectly
together, so there were gaps, some of them several centimeters wide along all
the walls and the floor. The roof is made of sheets of zinc overlapping and
nailed together. The posts of the house are made from the trunks of a gumbo-
limbo tree, which are known for taking
root and growing even after being cut down and chopped into logs. Our posts had done just that and were
sprouting small branches and leaves.

This is now our home, not just the tiny
house, but also all the land surrounding the diminutive shack. "Here we
are, my sweetness’s!" my father exclaims in his Belizean­ Criol accent.

He
gently lowers me to the ground, and I quickly scramble over to my mother, who
scoops me up so swiftly it gives the impression of a reflex.

"I'll have it
ready for you swiftly," he says excitedly as he disappears behind the house and reappears with a crowbar.

The doors of the house have a large wooden
board nailed across them, to prevent them from opening. He goes to work on
removing the wooden board at a rapid pace, and is done fast. Despite his strong
muscular frame, my father is not particularly fond of physical work, in fact he
detests it. This type of job, habitually, would be accompanied by a vast amount
of cursing, but he is in high spirits today, because he finally has his family
back.

We entered the house as one unit, my mother still carrying
me and my sister attached to her leg. My father has not told us to come in yet,
but the sun has set and the heavy darkness that blankets the jungle at night is
taking over. There may have been a few more scorpions, snakes and tarantulas
for him to kill inside, but at least we had walls around us.

We do remember, Sarah Jane more so than me, because of my young age, but both
of us can recall the joys and terrors of this place.

The first few days are tough and thorny. Sarah Jane and I
have to adjust to a different diet and different activities; the rainforest
itself has to adjust to our presence. We were the intruders, not the snakes and
monkeys. We have hiked away from society and into the wilds of Belize. The
nights are hard to adapt to; the jungle becomes alive with sound. The monkeys
howl and birds caw, the cockroaches search for food while the scorpions search
for cockroaches. Sarah Jane and I sleep close as we can to our mother, hoping
nothing crawls our way in the dark of night.

I remember my bedtime routine in
Michigan, before we had left for the jungle: Sitting on my cozy twin bed in my
grandparents' house, having been freshly plucked out of the sudsy warmth of the
bathtub and towel dried. The smell of the Johnsons baby shampoo still fragrant
in my damp hair. As my mother stuffed me into a pink fleece onesie, I began
asking for my most precious item: my bummy. Bummy was my name for my book of
Mother Goose rhymes, no one knows why I chose that name, but since I could speak,
I had been demanding my bummy, I am told it was one of my first words. Sarah
Jane and my mother would begin their nightly search for my bummy - under the
bed, behind the toy chest, in the closet. Each of them scurrying around fast
and franticly, as my demands for the book grew louder and louder. Once found, all three of us
would pile in my twin bed and begin to read, I knew each poem by heart, and
would soon drift to sleep with the gentle rhymes floating in my dreamy mind.

Now, in Belize, bedtime is different, our entire house is not much bigger than
the room Sarah and I shared at my grandparents. We cannot take a bath at night,
because all our bathing is either done in Cacao creek, the heavily canopied
river just about 100 yards in front of our house or with water hauled from the
river in a bucket. Whichever way, bathing is done during the heat of the day
and even then, the cool water would cause goose bumps to spring up on our brown
little backs. For bedtime, we are dressed in sleeveless nightgowns as we listen
to the howler monkeys and the crickets chatter outside. As Sarah Jane and I
roll out the large piece of foam we use for a mattress, our mother gets my
bummy out. One nice thing about such a small house, we never have to search for
my bummy. While our father sits outside listening to the radio and smoking a
joint, the three of us pile into bed, and begin to read the comforting words of
Mother Goose. Sarah Jane knows the rhymes by heart too, and will sometimes say
a few of them, with her sweet, soothing voice coating my ears; I drift into
safe happy dreams.

He was a natural born entertainer, so our father will always
find ways to make Sarah Jane and I laugh. Singing songs he simply makes up as
he goes or telling us action packed fairytales of Anansi the spider. Our
favorite form of entertainment is what we call the "noodle dance,"
Stark naked; he dances wildly and shakes about the house, laughing at himself
with every ridiculous movement. We cannot contain ourselves, within just a few
seconds of the dance, we are belly laughing, rolling around on the rigid wooden
floor, barely able to breathe. Our mother tries to maintain composure as long
as she can but before long, she is on the floor laughing just as hard as us. We
solicit him for a story or song or the noodle dance almost every night, but if
the mood was not right, he remains outside, smoking and grumbling
about "no peace and quiet with girls" and "too much rass,"
pretending not to hear us. Rass is the Belizean word for BS, and one of my
father’s all-time favorites.

Except for the few pineapple plants and banana trees, there
are not much grows on our land, so our father goes to Punta
Gorda town to get food and supplies once every two weeks. They want to live off
the land, he and my mother, but as of yet the only action towards this goal has
been planting a few fruit trees and hibiscus bushes around the property. He is
usually in a bad mood when it is time to go to town, firstly due to arguments
about money. The money we have is what our mother was able to save during our
last stay in Michigan. Secondly, because the trip to town is long and
straining. After he hikes the mile out of the jungle, which takes anywhere from
30 minutes to and an hour, depending on what the jungle has in store for him,
he waits on the side on the dirt road, sun beating down on him, for a truck to
come by so he can "hail a ride." If he is lucky, this kind stranger
will take him all the way to PG town, but sometimes the driver is headed to
another town like Dangrigia, or Orangewalk, and can only take him part of the
way. Once dropped off, he must again wait on the side of the dusty road, grime
sticking to his now sweat-coated clothes, for another willing driver to help
him finish the journey.

Once in town, things drastically improve. Everyone in
town knows "Congo Charlie" and is thrilled to have him back among
them. He uses his natural charisma to enchant the locals with harrowing, sometimes tall tales
of jungle life. Everywhere he turns he hears "Charlie! Charlie, I have
smoke for you" or "Charlie! Have a drink with me!" Although the
journey to town and back can be done in one day, he almost always stays longer.
The free pot to smoke, beer and rum to drink, and an open invitation to
stay at the local brothel tend to draw him in for a few days, but he will
always come back to us.

Finally, he returns, getting dropped off by his ride,
whomever he was able to find this time, on the dirt road, then making the mile
hike back to his family. We can hear him calling to us from far away, and all
of us come running, standing at the edge of the thick brush, waiting for him to
appear in his straw hat. Our mother is as excited as she can be.

"It’s
him, I can hear him! Your father is back!" she exclaims, like a teenage
girl about to meet her idol.

As soon as he sees us, he drops all his bags and
runs over.

"Sweetness’s! Daddy's heartstrings!" he declares, and he
lifts both Sarah Jane and me up and twirls us around.

He smells of marijuana
and stale booze, a musk he wears so often, it brings me comfort, it is the smell
of my daddy. From his journey he always comes back with gossip about what was
going on in town, large bags of rice and beans, a chicken which is just
starting to thaw after the long journey, plus a new supply of marijuana and a
bottle of rum, which will keep him content until his next trip.

The money does not last long. This means supply trips to
town get less frequent, which means more time together and less food, which
means more fighting. More fighting means more crying and more mood swings for
our mother. During the really ghastly fights, Sarah Jane and I stay outside. In
front of the house we distract ourselves by playing with our rag dolls and the
happy apple, a plastic apple with a smiley face that rocked back and forth and
played out-of-tune music. Our father storms out of the house, and heads towards
the path out of the jungle, without so much as a glance at us girls. Grumbling
words like "that honkey white bitch" and "fuckin' rass"
under his breath, he plunges into the jungle, machete twirling in front of him.
As soon as he leaves, our mother's mental stability begins to deteriorate.

Thursday, March 9, 2017

May
1984-zooming along I 696 in my mother’s dirt brown Buick. Bob Marley and the
Whalers were wailin’ on the cassette player. The windows were all open, letting
in the much anticipated spring air. I was enjoying how the wind was playing in
my hair, causing it to whip wildly in the air above my head and brushing the
ceiling of the car. The frantic energy of the wind matched the mix of excited
emotions inside me.

I was going to see my best friends....my sisters.

Sarah and Rosie....

I came up in the bourgeois public school system of Birmingham Michigan, and
coming there from a once rural, and extremely counter culture farm life...
needless to say kids thought I was quirky at best. To say that I had crowds of
friends would just be a lie....but that was ok, because I always knew that I
had Sarah and Rosie. I looked forward to their letters filled with stories
about their dogs, and chickens....fantastic tales of imaginary characters (based
mostly on the misadventures of their chicken population). I loved hearing about
the exotic fruits and plants that they had where they lived.

There is a fruit there called Craboo. I always wanted to know
what it tasted like, because my sisters insisted that the taste defied
description. It all seemed very exciting to me to live in the jungle. I had
lived in the northern woods in a cabin and tents during my earliest years, and
missed the life of nature and endless play that I had become accustomed to. The
banal suburban existence that was placed in my path was mild at best in my mind
compared to the extraordinary life in which my dearest friends still lived.

My partners in crime lived in Belize Central America for the majority of the
time. While they enjoyed themselves because, of course, they were children, and
children find any way to entertain themselves in any situation, it was a very
difficult life for them sometimes. There were many times that Charles, their
father would disappear for days with the understanding that he was going to get
much needed provisions. Sometimes he came back with food, but it was hardly
ever enough to feed their growing family.

I was never sheltered from the knowledge of how difficult their
life was. Nor was I ever allowed to take for granted all of the privileges that
I had been given. While most children were being told "Eat that broccoli,
there are starving children in Africa who would LOVE to have that!" I was
being told "Eat that broccoli, your best friends are starving in Belize
and would LOVE to have that." Even as a small child, I knew that it was
true.

Even so...I fantasized about climbing trees, swimming in the clear
blue pools of the river, visiting Mayan ruins, and talking to fairies in the
jungle with them...This is where they lived. It was another world from
me....seemingly a fantasy land, filled with magical creatures and fascinating
mysteries.

But...when reality reared its ugly head, and somebody needed a dentist or, Na,
their mother and my mother’s best friend, would need to see a Doctor. They
would come to the States and stay in Northville with their grandparents, Grandma
and Grandpa Burr. I was closer with them than I ever had been to my own
biological grandparents. They were wonderful yet strict and structured people.
When I went there, I would have to make sure to "be a good
guest".

No problem!
This is where we were driving now! I was 8 years old, Sarah almost 10, and
Rosie 7. The three of us together spun stories that defy understanding to
anyone but ourselves. We had our own language (still do, we call it gypsy).
When they were here, my life was my world with them.

A magical place where everything was possible. We would lose
ourselves in the intricate characters that we would invent. Sometimes we were
wandering orphans, fending for ourselves in abandoned buildings....many times
in actual abandoned buildings that we would claim as a temporary club house. Then
we could be mermaids escaping from a hungry giant, who wanted nothing better
than to tuck in to some good ole mermaid stew. Other times we were wolves,
searching for the perfect spot to build our den for our new litters of pups. Then
there were....the Barbie games! They were by far better than any soap opera
that anybody had ever seen.

This is who my mother was taking me to see today!

It had been easily a year since we had seen each other
last...maybe longer.

It hadn't occurred to me that my mother may be just as excited
as I was to see her best friend as well.

I was wearing an orange and white striped pinafore with my favorite white
patent leather shoes and white tights. My hair was down and long. The wind had
formed it into a "devil may care" sort of style, and I was ready! I
was ready to see my friends!

As the car pulled into the large immaculate driveway, suddenly
an emotion came over me that I wasn't prepared for.

The emotion was fear.

What if they didn't like me anymore? What if they were better
friends with each other and I wouldn't fit into their games anymore? How would
we greet each other? Would we hug? Would we squeal and jump around each other
and grab and clutch and hug and kiss and be excited (like we do now)? Or would
we stay calm and feel each other out?

It had been easily a year since we had seen each other. So much
can change.

I realized that I had actually been biting the back of the head
rest of the driver side seat in front of me, leaving dozens of little dimples
in the upholstery behind my mother’s head. My dad would not be happy....oh
well.

We walked up the flower lined walkway towards the wooden door of
the condo where Grandma and Grandpa lived. My heart started beating faster and
faster.

This was it. I was going to play with my friends!

The door opened and Grandma Burr smiled down at me warmly. She
grabbed me and hug me tight, as though she had seen and granddaughter that she
hadn't seen for years. I felt so welcomed by her. I still didn't see my friends though. Suddenly,
I heard thundering footsteps! My sister Sarah came bounding down the stairs
followed very quickly by little Rosie, but stopped before they reached the
bottom of the stairs.

I looked at Sarah and recognized the outfit she had on. Pink
shorts that were once mine before my well-fed body grew out of them, and a
white T shirt that we had painted together with glitter and puff paints...it
WAS the 80's after all. I loved those shorts but, as usual my clothes looked
better on her than they did on me. I noticed that they DID look like they had
been going hungry. Skinny legs and arms. Clothing fell loose on Rosie’s tiny
frame.

Sarah stood looking at me with what I'm sure were the same fears
that I had about our reunion. They both seemed nervous, but ecstatic at the
same time. Who knows how long they were going to be here this time, or how long
they would be gone once they inevitably were taken away again.

They were here! Now! I was looking at them! My life had begun
again! I got to be a mermaid again! Sarah would of course control the games,
being the oldest, but I never minded. She always came up with the greatest
games. My sisters were home!

I would spend every weekend with them until school let out, and
then once summer vacation began, we would be together for at least the next 2
months straight. Standing in the middle of the stairs with giant beaming smiles
on their faces, Rosie and Sarah peered at me between the rungs of the
bannister. Sarah looked at me. With an excited,
smiling ring to her voice, that still makes my heart smile to this day, she said
with ultimate joy, "HI RACHEL!"

Every summer that my sisters were with me was the greatest
summer of my life.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

My father was a native
Belizean. Born and raised in the colony of British Honduras, he left just before
it was granted self-government in 1964. He used to say Belize will always call
you back.

In 1973, Charles Douglas
Forman was 26 and just off the plane. He was the prodigal son, returning to his
homeland after years in North America. His afro was neat and low and he could
speak English with a nearly perfect American accent. Well dressed and handsome,
with a magnetic smile and perfectly cleft chin, he had come to dazzle his
former squad of street urchins with James Brown inspired dance moves.

My dad’s parents, Leone
Mason and Charles Forman were not married.
In fact, my dad was what Belizeans call a shalleye baby. A shalleye baby
is, essentially, a child born out of wedlock.
When the mother presents the baby to the purported father he asks “shall
I claim him, or shall I deny him?” Thus the name shalleye.

My grandmother says that
on the day she delivered my father there was another woman in the hospital who
was also pregnant with the child of Charles Forman, my grandfather. Grandpa had a way with the ladies. At the time (and still somewhat today) it was
not uncommon in Belize for a married man to have multiple shalleye babies with
other women. There is even a Belizean
folk song about it.

Shalleye
baby/ dat a shalleye pikni/ I no pikni daddy\dat a shalleye baby

But it is not easy growing
up as a shalleye baby. GrandpaForman was a relatively wealthy Creole man but he
did very little to help my father. Grandma Leone was left to raise him and her
other children, by several different men, on her own. She lived on Raccoon
street in a wooden colonial-style house they was slowly succumbing to the heat
and humidity of the tropics. To make ends meet, Leone put her children to work
roasting and then shelling raw cashew nuts which she and uncle Bluebeard sold
at market. The acid from the cashew shells burned my fathers little hands after
long hours shelling the nuts.

By sixth grade, Charles
had dropped out of school and was hustling full time for a living. My grandmother tired to discipline him by
sending him to work for uncle Bluebeard, who had a cart from which he vended
nuts, shaved ice, and fruit. Bluebeard was an ill-tempered alcoholic who went
heavy on the belt. He violently beat my father on a regular basis. Although
beating children was part of the culture, Bluebeard didn’t know when to stop. He
would leave my father with bleeding, broken skin that formed gnarled scars on
his backside. Eventually the scars on his skin faded, but the ones that had cut
deeper never did.

When he was old enough,
Charles escaped Bluebeards clutches and went back to live with his Mother. He
landed a coveted job as a waiter at the tony Fort George Hotel. The Fort George
was a bastion of colonial values. Business men and colonial types kicked back
in the white wicker chairs on its ocean-side porch and speak of their affairs
in the Queens English while sipping lemon and cane juice from an impeccably
sparkling class, hand-shined tableside by a grinning black boy.

At the Fort George, my
father learned how to cater to the needs of the rich, white men who were
quickly impressed with his wit, charm and attention to detail. There was one
man in particular, a Canadian business man, who took a liking to the young
Charles Forman. The Canadian had considerable wealth, but no children of his own,
so he enjoyed lavishing attention onto Charlie, as he called my dad. These were
halcyon days in the life of the colony, and they were about to come to an end.

On October 31, 1961
Hurricane Hattie made landfall just south of Belize City. Powerful Hattie was a
category five storm. She devastated the city. Gale force winds tore apart
buildings. Even the hurricane shelters where people had been evacuated to were
destroyed. A storm tide surged up to the third floor of any buildings that did
remain standing. Hundreds of people died and the city was in ruins. When the
waters receded, the stench of death rose from the rubble. Thousands of survivors
swarmed the streets for days digging in the crumbled ruins in search of any
kind of food. My grandmother and her children survived, but my father had lost
faith in the colonial authorities who, in spite of ample warnings, seemed
unprepared for the wrath of Hattie and aloof in their relief efforts after the
storm.

The Canadian returned
shortly after Hattie struck to survey the damage and check on Charlie’s wellbeing.
Perhaps he saw the desperation in the young man’s eyes, or was overcome by the
crushing blow Hattie had dealt to the city he so loved and its residents. Whatever
the reason, he offered my father what he had been praying for: a future without
bluebeard, hurricanes, poverty, and colonial oppression. Charlie was to come
live with him in faraway Canada. My father jumped at the chance. So, like me,
my father was 14 years old when he got his one-way ticket out of Belize.

He didn’t look back until
1973.

My mother was wearing a
white caftan that was nearly see-through as she stood in at the fruit stall in
Market Square. She had never bought a
mango before and the woman at the stall was giving her a hard time. The locals
did not quite know what to make of this strange nearly naked white woman with a
backpack.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

My father was a good
shot, when his gun was working. You have to be if your dinner depends on
shooting a four foot iguana that is ambling high in the rain forest canopy. The
problem was that sometimes they fell out of the tree and into the river, sinking
to the bottom, becoming very difficult to find. It could be several days later
that the carcass was spotted by me or my sister, stuck in flotsam along the
river’s edge.

The iguana escaped the
soup pot but, unfortunately, had not cheated death.

Ever since he came back
from iguana hunting empty handed we teased him about missing the shot. He swore
that he had not missed, and now he was vindicated. He removed the swollen
creature from the water and lamented about the waste of a good meal. Rosie and
I we not particularly fond of iguana stew anyway because the meat is very dark
and a bit slimy. In fact, we though iguana was pretty gross. We figured the
iguana had done us a favor by escaping.

However, we kept this to
ourselves because if our father was hunting iguana, it meant that times were
tough. Truth be told, neither he nor my mother enjoyed iguana but it was better
than nothing and most of the time, nothing was what we had.

My parents met in
February 1973 in Market Square in the heart of Belize City. Market square is
still a bustling locale, where vendors hawk everything from cashew fruit to
brightly colored Sunday dresses.

Mary Kay Burr was 23
years old in 1973. The daughter of an accountant and a country-club secretary,
she had a bachelor’s degree in theater from Wayne State University in Detroit.
She was the captain of the cheerleading squad at Farmington High School in
Farmington Hills, Michigan. She was Miss Teen Michigan, and went on to compete
in the Miss Teen USA pageant in Texas. She sang soprano and starred in several
opera productions while at Wayne State. After college, she made a very good
living singing jingles for radio commercials and performing in night clubs,
including the Playboy Club in Detroit. By all outward appearances, she was
successful. She had her own downtown penthouse apartment, a nice car, and
plenty of suitors.

But she was restless;
something inside of her would not sit still. Maybe it’s the same thing that
compelled me to make the agonizing choice fifteen years later to walk away, by
myself, from my family. But, then again, maybe not.

After her beauty pageant
days, Mary Kay became a back-to-nature flower child. When McGovern lost the
1972 election, she decided to backpack through Central America. Her stated
destination was Columbia, South America, but like any free-wheeling
non-conformist, the real destination was the journey itself.

I don’t know what made
her throw her belongings into a backpack and take off. In the 60’s revolution
and lots of pot smoke was in the air and everyone was high off of it. Bras were
burnt and armpits were hairy. My mom and her hippie friends dreamt of a new
world order where peace and love prevailed. But by 1972 America was waking up
from the dream. Mary Kay was not ready for that. She held on to her dreams,
packed them in that backpack with her caftans and patchouli oil, and headed to
Mexico.

She ended up in Belize
by accident. Mexico turned out to be a terrible misadventure that she barely
survived. She met a man there who, like all men, was probably attracted to her
stunning looks. She had long dark hair, fair skin that could hold a glowing
tan, and big doe eyes. And she was, perhaps, a bit naive. The man was wealthy.
He took her out, they had fun, and then they went back to his place. He wanted
things to go further than she did. When she declined his advances, he took what
he wanted.

Afterwards her, he
locked her in a room and left her dazed and shaken on the floor. It was
something she wouldn’t talk about for 30 years.

She had no idea where
she was. The room had a narrow window that looked out onto a stretch of ocean
populated with mangrove trees. She managed to open the window and squeeze her
body through it, making her way by swimming through the mangroves along the
shoreline until she saw signs of civilization. She was helped by a couple of
long haired beach bums who were also young American travelers. They were headed
to the Yucatan in their VW Bus. In need of the kindness of strangers, my mom
went along for the ride.

The Yucatan, with its
unspoiled stretches of white sand, was the perfect place to recover from her
ordeal. The two travelers were gentlemen who treated her kindly and did not try
to take advantage of her. But, like many a tourist in Mexico, Montezuma’s
revenge eventually caught up with her. Her companions nursed her back to health
but the bout with dysentery took its toll. She did not feel strong enough to
continue as planned onto the Pan-American Highway to South America. There was a
country she had never heard of just a few miles south. British Honduras (now
Belize) was just a days drive away.

And so the Michigan
beauty queen found herself on the hot and crowded streets of the British
colony, trying to discern the thick Pidgin English dialect as she haggled over
the price of a mango.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Some things are just meant to be.That was the unshakable feeling I had
about my sparkly Smurfette sandals.They came to me in an unexpected way,
against all odds.

The day they dropped themselves into
my life was a reasonably ordinary day in the life of a pair of jungle girls.Our mother was pillaging through the
old, army green duffel bags we kept under the house, looking for a few new
items to add to our wardrobe.During our visits to Michigan, she
would stock up on clothing for my older sister Sarah and me to wear during our
time in the jungle.Our baby sister Minni didn't have a
stockpile of clothes in these duffel bags yet, all she wore at the time was a
diaper, sometimes a little sleeping gown, sometimes nothing at all.Everything in the duffel bags was
usually kept dry and safe for future use beneath a tarp, under our stilted
house. Sarah and I had 4 or 5 outfits
each, that we wore over and over, week in, week out.Being active little girls living in
the jungle, our clothes took quite a beating.Between climbing every tree we could
find, the constant presence of mildew, soot from the fire we used for cooking
and scrubbing them on river rocks to keep them clean, our clothes were destined
to fall apart, meeting their journey's end as kitchen or bath rags.In the past few weeks leading up to
this particular day, two major clothing casualties had occurred.First, my sister snagged her pink shorts
on a tree, causing a huge hole on one side. Then, my favorite gray dress with the tiny
flowers ripped and, after being mended so many times that the fabric became thin
in spots, was beyond repair.Sarah and I watched with great
anticipation as my mother searched through the duffel bags.

The days of clothing replacement were
always bittersweet.With so few outfits to choose from,
we grew quite attached to what we had.Each one had its own feeling, its own
spirit.I was sad to give up my grey dress,
it was perfect for twirling.I knew Sarah felt the same about her
pink shorts, they fit her perfectly, hugging her long legs with a very
complimentary pink color.But replacing the clothes was
exciting as well because since we didn't get to shop for new clothes in the
jungle of Belize, this was as close as we got retail therapy.The
idea of something new, or at least new to us (most of the items in the duffel bags were hand-me-downs from family and friends) was very intriguing.After several minutes of digging
through the bags, our mother finally pulled out a light pink top and a pair of
blue shorts for me. The shorts were a
bit long, and the top had a tendency to slip off one shoulder.This new outfit certainly lacked the
fun whimsical quality of my grey dress, but I knew the shorts would be ideal
for climbing trees.My mother continued digging, pulling
out a wrinkled pair of white shorts with rainbow piping for Sarah.She also found out a yellow tank top.They both fit perfectly, and Sarah was
satisfied.She definitely got the better end of
the deal, as my slightly over-sized clothes seemed flat and dull in comparison
to her fanciful new outfit.I let out a sigh of disappointment,
and yanked the neck of my shirt back in place.However, a surprise awaited me; my
mother pulled out a pair of sparking pink sandals from the duffel and set them
on the floor.

"I forgot I packed these.”

"My Smurfette sandals!"
Sarah said with excitement and confusion.

That is exactly what they were, the
wonderful Smurfette sandals Sarah had worn during our last summer in Michigan,
over two years ago. I could still
picture her, prancing around on the perfectly manicured lawns of Farragut Court
in those sparkly shoes. She was a true vision.

"These are too small for you,
honey," my mother said. "You
were out growing them last time we were in Michigan."

Sarah was already busily trying to
cram her foot into one of the sandals.There was no denying that they were
way too small. Her foot barely fit
between the delicate side straps, and her toes and heel were hanging over the edges
of the shoe.

"Try them on, Rosie," my
mother said as she tossed one of the sandals towards me.

I slipped the sandal on my foot, and
buckled it as tight as it would go.The shoes were a bit big, and already
had quite a few miles on them, but I felt like Cinderella. I knew then and there these shoes were
exceptional.My mother examined how the sandals
fit, and told me I could wear them with socks until I grew into them.I scrambled to find a pair of socks,
strapped on both sandals and trotted outside.I couldn't believe my luck.My mother could have left these shoes
behind in Michigan, it would have made sense, they were too small forSarah and too big for me.If my mother had found these shoes in
the duffel earlier, Sarah may have been able to squeeze her foot into them, and
she would have been able to claim them as her own once again. But as luck would
have it, those events did not happen, the shoes made their way to Belize, and
remained hidden for two years -- it was simply meant to be.

In the depths of the rain forest,
during a time when money and food were in short supply for our family, these
sandals made me feel like a posh American girl.They reminded me of a different time
in my life, when food and friends were plentiful.There I was, a little jungle girl
wearing socks and sparkly sandals everywhere I could.When I saw those sandals on my feet,
I felt hopeful for my future, they were a symbol of strength to get through the
hard and trying times.When hunger came, or my father's
yelling, or my mother's crying, the sandals and their sparkles were my armor.
When they were on my feet, I knew the dark clouds would pass.

Eventually after many months, the
jungle began to lay claim on my precious sandals.The straps on the side began to
break, and even though my mother tried to glue them, I knew they were beyond
repair.I had worn them all over, to explore
the rough jungle terrain, to climb trees, and to play in mud.One morning, I put them by my bed. I couldn't wear them anymore, but I could
still look at them, and seeing them sparkle in the sun kept me hopeful.Just seeing them next to my pillow
gave me a sense that somewhere, somehow in my future, I would have another pair
of Smurfette sandals.With a spark of promise in my heart,
I tucked them under my pillow for safe keeping, and ran outside, with my bare
feet, to romp and play with my big sister.